Tip of the Week: How to Be Productive When Your Workstation’s Booting

You walk into the office, just like you would on any other morning, and discover that there are updates that need to finish applying before you can use your workstation. Well, that’s certainly frustrating. Sure, it’ll probably only take a few minutes to complete, but you have your coffee in hand, and you’re ready to dive into the day. How can you burn that time, without it being a total waste?

Luckily, there are a few ways to spend this time that could prove beneficial to the day’s responsibilities, and that don’t require your computer to do!

Prepare for Your Day Fortunately, your computer is only necessary to actually complete the tasks in store for you. Planning your strategy to tackle them doesn’t expressly require the use of your device, as you likely have a decent idea of what your agenda looks like. This means you can look at the time spent waiting on your workstation as an opportunity, instead of an inconvenience.

Instead of blankly staring at your screen, take a sheet of scrap paper and focus on your strategy for the rest of the day. Are there any tasks that you need to complete more so than others? What do you need to accomplish--whether you need to check in with a coworker, call a client on the phone, or fulfill some other responsibility--and what needs to be rearranged to allow you the time you will need to do so?

While it may seem silly at first, exercises like these could prove to be helpful to getting in the right mindset for a productive day. Plus, it’ll likely take just long enough to do so that your workstation will be able to start up.

Straighten Up Your Workspace We’ve all been there… a desk is clean and tidy, everything precisely where it should be, until it suddenly isn’t at all. Between those moments of just plopping something down (to look at later, of course) and the habit many have of allowing things to be plopped down more and more frequently, it is little wonder that the workstation of today tends to be a bit unkempt.

However, if the time spent waiting for a computer to start up is also utilized as the chance to organize the work area, not only will it make the work environment a generally more pleasant place to be, it’ll make a better impression upon any visitors that happen to come to the office. After all, a messy desk could be the difference between a client, and a missed opportunity.

Refill and Mingle Of course, productivity can sometimes be measured in more than just minutes saved on a task. Oftentimes, productivity can present itself in other ways. For instance, a good working relationship can expedite no shortage of tasks, so getting a second cup of coffee and chatting in the break room can provide a surprising boost to the workflow. By simply establishing lines of communication and camaraderie between you and your co-workers through casual interaction, operations will likely run much more smoothly, and the workplace will be a more pleasant place to be.

Otherwise, if you’d rather try to minimize the downtime that your users experience in general, you should consider implementing a policy that requires maintenance to take place after hours, reducing the likelihood of workday delays. A managed service provider can assist you by implementing these updates at the end of each workday, once your employees have left. As a result, your devices remain up-to-date, without the inconvenience of updating them when there’s work to be done.

Interested in learning what else Automation Concepts & Technologies, Inc. can do to assist your business? Reach out to us at (508) 622-5100.

About the author

Brian McCafferty founded Automation Concepts in 1989 with the commitment that honesty and integrity would be the cornerstones of this business. McCafferty is an experienced software developer and systems engineer with excellent oral and written communication skills, which allow him to make complex technical concepts easy to understand

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About Automation Concepts & Technologies, Inc.

Automation Concepts & Technologies, Inc. strives to provide the best comprehensive IT, Computer, and Networking services to small businesses. We can handle all of your organization's technology challenges, starting with planning, implementing, and supporting the IT solutions that are critical to your growth and success. Learn More